Aman, in the Bible, favored minister of Ahasuerus. He commanded that all Jews be put to death. Esther interceded for her people, and Aman was hanged on the gallows he had set up for Mordecai.

Columbia University Encyclopedia

can a Western society retain freedom of speech and expression while the percentage of Moslems continues to increase?

As usual there are a lot of folks getting very excitable and overheated on here. Anyone would think that absolute freedom of speech has been the norm throughout Western Europe since the year dot, and only since the arrival of the wicked Muslims has there been any problem.

In the UK until the 1960s all theatrical performances in the UK were subject to censorship by the Lord Chamberlain (a stooge of HM Majesty the Queen), and the censorship was very strict. In Shakespeare's day poets and playrights were always falling foul of the government's spies, and "falling foul" didn't mean a reprimand or a fine, but more likely a dagger in the back down a dark alley.

And the guy who shot John Lennon wasn't a Muslim, was he?

Bob Doney

Why do people always say that Europeans need Muslim immigrants to fill up their continent because the Europeans' birth rate is below replacement, and they need the new immigrants to support the welfare payments of the aging population? The question I have is: what signs do these immigrant advocates have to indicate that these young immigrants would support them? Why should they? Won't it be better for the Europeans to lower their taxes now so that they don't have to support a large population of welfare receiving immigrants and save for their own retirements while they still can?

I am told that someone having a tantrum can be stopped by placing a pistol to their head and telling them that they will be shot if they do not stop. This suggests that behavior can be modified by offering sufficient consequences.

The liberal and leftist appeasement to the muslim threats indicate that they have responded to sufficient threat.

Can the reverse also be true? Can sufficient threat be made to the Muslims such that they stop their threatening behavior? What sort of threat would this be? Prison? deportation?

The Muslim threats will continue to expand until they find resistance sufficient to stop them.

The deeper question that is not being discussed is simple: can a Western society retain freedom of speech and expression while the percentage of Moslems continues to increase?
Many will not like to see such a stark "either - or" issue, but it is clear that Islam demands as a matter of course that some topics cannot ever be discussed in any form. Not in print, not in an artwork, not in a novel, not anywhere. Salman Rushdie found out about the novel, Theo van Gogh found out about the film, and now the artists living with death threats over their heads are finding out about the printing of cartoons.

Free speech used to be one of the bedrocks that liberals and leftists would refuse to give up under any pressure, but now we see them essentiallly urging just that. If some group of Christians had made threats of death in the United States over the "Piss Christ" display we should not hear the end of it even now, but the silence of the artistic community over Rushdie, van Gogh, the Aftenposten does no credit. Where does it end, this giving-up of basic Western culture, under the pressure of Islam? Where does it end? The Danes have taken something of a stand, but are under pressure from NGO's of the Left.

Multiculturalism vs. free speech, choose one side or the other, but it isn't possible to choose both. The fundamental premise of multiculturalism has been shown false; some cultures are simply incompatible with others, no matter how many NGO-sponsored conferences are held in Davos and other places. That is the question for Europe in the first half of this century.

I find the extreme reaction from Muslims, both in Europe and abroad, to the Danish cartoons of Mohammed quite absurd. Besides lacking a sense of humor about cultural and religious icons, they show no understanding of the right to freedom of expression in Western civilizations. As Professor Samuel Huntington predicted in his book, The New World Order and the Clash of Civilizations, the fault lines will be between the Muslim and Judeo-Chrtistian sensibilities. The only bright ray of hope surrounding this latest clash is that The New York Times finally published an article on the controversy in the international section of its online newspaper(last Saturday, I think). Of course, being liberal in its editorial view point, the reporter portrayed Muslims as the injured party, victims of "Islamophobia," according to a quote from an imam in Europe. And, of course, there was no mention of the Danish cartoonists, who had to go into hiding because of death threats against them. This intellectual disease of political correctness is actually a form of intellectual appeasement. And eventually appeasement leads to capitulation to political and religious extremists. So "Bravo" to the public prosecutor in the Danish town of Viborg for dismissing the charges against the Jylland-Posten by 11 Muslim organizations, he has stuck a blow for freedom to all libertarians around the world. And another "Bravo" to the Brussels Journal for reporting on this issue.